PALMIPEDES. 157 



small and very delicate transverse laminze, which, with the fleshy thickness of 

 the tongue, creates some affinity between these birds and the ducks. Were it 

 not for the length of their tarsi, and the nudity of their legs, we might even 

 place them among the Palmipedes. They feed on shell fish, insects, and the 

 spawn of fishes, which they capture by means of their long neck, turning the 

 head on one side to give more effect to the hook of the upper mandible. They 

 construct their nest of earth in marshes, placing themselves astride of it to 

 hatch their eggs, a position to which they are forced to resort by the length 

 of their legs. The species known, 



Ph. ruber (The Red Flamingo), is from three to four feet in height ; ash 

 coloured, with brown streaks, during the first year ; in the second there is a 

 rosy hue on the wings, and in the third it acquires a permanent purple-red 

 on the back, and rose-coloured wings. The quills of the wing are black ; the 

 beak yellow, with a black tip, and the feet brown. 



This species is found in all parts of the eastern continent below 40". 



We have also an American species, the Ph. ruber of Temminck. 



ORDER VI. 



PALMIPEDES. 



THESE birds are characterised by their feet, formed for swimming ; that is 

 to say, placed far back on the body, attached to short and 

 compressed tarsi, and with palmated toes. Their dense 

 and polished plumage saturated with oil, and the thickly 

 set down which is next to their skin, protect them from 

 the water in which they live. They are the only birds 

 whose bill surpasses which it sometimes does to a con- 

 siderable extent the length of their feet; and this is so, to enable them to 

 search for their food in the depths below, while they swim on the surface. 

 Their sternum is very long, affording a complete guard to the greater part of 

 their viscera, having, on each side, but one emargination or oval foramen, 

 filled up with membrane. The engraving shows the conformation of the 

 stomach of the family. 

 This order admits of a tolerably precise division into four families. 



FAMILY I. 



BRACHYPTER^E. 



A PART of this family has some external affinities with that of the Ga'Iinula?. 

 Their legs, placed further back than in any other birds, renders walking 

 painful to them, and obliges them, when on land, to stand vertically. In 

 addition to this, as most of them have but feeble powers of flight, and as some 



